Marketing With Miles The Marketing Edge: Internet marketer Miles Baker interviews successful online marketers, finds out what they do, how they do it, and what gives them the marketing edge.

Being that it’s Labor Day in the US today many of us will find we suddenly have some extra time on our hands. No need to waste the entire day, so why not spend a little time doing something that’s of critical importance: backing up your PC! If you don’t have an automated system for backing up, perhaps you could take time today to set one up. If you have nothing at all to backup on, then go to the store, get a backup drive and start. Remember, it’s not a matter IF your computer is going to crash, it’s a question of WHEN.

I currently use a few backup methods. I backup everything to an internal hard drive every night at 3am, I have an external USB drive that I backup to once every few weeks, and today I’m looking at setting up with Mozy for online/offsite backup.

The program I use and absolutely love for automatic backups is GoodSync, (created by the people who make RoboForm). It’s a really nice program that can remember several different types of backups and syncs. I also use it to sync certain files to my laptop and my USB thumb drive.

Whether you’re off for Labor Day or not, I hope you take some time to protect your hard work and backup your PC.

Yesterday I received a call from Matt, he’s the marketing director with Trialpay. Coincidentally I had just come across Trialpay about 5 days earlier when I went to purchase Linkman, a software for bookmarking websites that I use.

TrialPay works by offering customers an alternative to paying for your product directly. Instead, customers can register for one of many different offers that Trialpay has and then get your software product for free. Trialpay works with many large companies (Ebay, Gap, McAfee) and offers include various credit cards, music downloads, movie rentals, etc. When the customer signs up for an offer, let’s say they decide to join BlockBuster movie rental service, you get paid an amount from BlockBuster, and in turn the customer gets to download your product.

It’s actually pretty ingenious if you think about it. It’s like letting your customer pay for your product by buying something else through an affiliate link that pays you a commission. It’s a win-win, you get paid, and the customer gets more bang for their buck.

Trialpay has a case study on their site with the company Lavasoft (makers of Ad-Aware). Using TrialPay they made an additional 5000 sales a month!

I’m not going to go in-depth about all the ins and outs of TrialPay, but the amount you make as a vendor varies depending on the offer, and you can offer two options to your customers; Trialpay and your own merchant, and you can still do affiliate tracking if you want.

Matt did mention that this service works best for products that are under or around $50, and you need to have a digital product, software is ideal, and any kind of trialware is perfect for this service.

I’m currently working on a software program and will definitely be testing this one out.

When I signed up for HackerSafe they told me that their tests proved it increased conversions and they touted to me how recognized the brand name ‘HackerSafe’ was. It was recognized worldwide and a sign of trust and security that gave your site visitors and customers extra comfort when doing business with them and helped overcome buyer skepticism.

Hard to believe it was that strong of a brand. Especially since I went to one of my sites today and apparently they have suddenly changed ALL the HackerSafe “trusted and recognized” logos to ‘McAfee Secure’ logos. I guess all the credibility wasn’t worth keeping. It also wasn’t worth telling their customers about ahead of time either. I pay $100 a month for their .gif image on two of my websites, would have been nice to know ahead of time along with justification of the switch.

I read several articles about the HackerSafe logo where split testing from 3rd parties showed a slight increase in sales when the HackerSafe logo was used vs. not using it. Now, I’m really overpaying for it I feel, although I will have to do my own split-testing to see if it’s making any difference. Only time will tell.

Just makes you wonder how strong a brand really is or how together a company is when their product and brand can simply be replaced without even notifying paying customers about the switch. Like I wasn’t going to notice or care. Apparently they are banking on McAfee being a bigger brand name, let’s hope they’re right.

Are you paying for HackerSafe logos? How do you feel about the switch? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

I‘ve been working on podcast that I’m about to release on this site and in the process found some great sources for adding music to your own podcasts. If you plan on doing a professional podcast and you’re running an actual business then you don’t want to just copy some song off iTunes and throw it into your podcast, not only is it illegal, but it could get you in trouble down the road. You want to make sure that you have the rights to use the music or that it’s royalty free music.

Here’s some good sources I came across in my search…

• Opuzz.com – Purchase 10-second music clips for as little as $4.99
• The Music Bakery
• Premium Beat
• Podsafe Music – As cheap as 99 cents a clip.
• Sound Dogs – For all kinds of sound clips like police sirents, voices, booms, and bangs.

Have a good source for podcast music or sound effects? Leave a comment and share it with the rest of us.

I’ve been keeping this under wraps for a while, but it’s grown a bit out of control now. So I’m officially declaring that I’ll be running for president in 2008. Watch the video below for a story my local television station did on me.

This is actually a very cool concept, and very interesting in terms of viral marketing, and Internet marketing in general. It seems the lines are really blurring with what you can do online dynamically with video. With YouTube’s new inteartive buttons in their videos, and videos like this one where you can insert dynamic text I think we’re on the verge of seeing a lot more when it comes to interactive video.